Highlights

I think generally PSMA-Lutetium or Lutetium-PSMA is still relatively difficult to access in the UK, I mean it’s not available on the NHS, we have some private patients who are on it. There are relatively few treatment centers at the moment for it. We are doing clinical trials on it, so we’re trying to offer patients the chance of the treatment through clinical trials. My own personal experience of it is that it’s generally fairly well tolerated, and there aren’t any very significant toxicities that will kind of limit dosing, or limit significantly the number of patients having the treatment. So, we would also always go through the benefits and risks of the treatments, but I don’t think it’s going to have a very significant impact in terms of the number of patients having the treatment.

I think by far the limiting factor [for Lutetium 177Lu-PSMA-617 uptake in the UK] is the expense, at the moment it’s very expensive, and we don’t have good access to PSMA PET scans, which are an important part of the assessment as well. And as I said, there’s relatively limited access to Lutetium-PSMA in the UK at the moment anyway in terms of the actual treatment itself. There are centers which are approved to give it, and because it’s a radioactive agent, a radionuclide, it has to run through additional regulatory checks in order – it’s not like starting a new oral therapy such as abiraterone for example, you need further approvals and infrastructures required for Lutetium-PSMA. So, those are some of the barriers at the moment, but by far the biggest is the expense. It’s very, very expensive, and at the moment it’s probably prohibitively expensive for the NHS.